Congress Finds Biden-Harris Admin. Released ‘at Least 99’ Suspected Terrorists into U.S.
A new report is revealing that the Biden-Harris administration has not only allowed dangerous criminals to enter America illegally, but also released known and suspected terrorists into the U.S. According to a report published Monday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, “The open-borders policies of President Joe Biden and border czar Vice President Kamala Harris have allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the United States, including terrorist organizations and other bad actors looking to harm Americans.”
The report notes that while the Biden-Harris administration has allowed nearly 10 million illegal immigrants to cross the southern border, 375 illegal immigrants apprehended at the border were identified on the U.S. government’s terrorist watchlist, marking “a more than 3,000 percent increase of watchlisted alien encounters compared to all four years of the Trump Administration.” Alarmingly, the report adds that “at least 99” illegal immigrants on the terror watchlist were “released into American communities” by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An additional 34 are currently in DHS custody but have not yet been removed from American soil.
Illegal immigrants on the terror watchlist encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hail from at least 36 different countries, the report says, “including places with an active terrorist presence such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.” Additionally, over 33,000 Chinese nationals have been encountered by CBP since Biden took office in 2021.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials also told the committee that officers encounter “members and affiliates” of terrorist organizations at the border. A senior ICE official is cited in the report telling Congress that “the Biden-Harris border crisis has made it more difficult for officers to arrest national security threats in the United States. If a national security threat recently crossed the border, ICE finds it ‘very difficult’ to locate the illegal alien in the United States, given the alien’s lack of a ‘digital footprint’ in the country.”
The report further observed that approximately 95% of immigration judges do not have access to top secret information regarding national security, resulting in judges unwittingly granting bond to illegal immigrants who have been flagged as threats to national security. In fact, immigration judges have granted bond to at least 27 illegal immigrants so far who are on the terror watchlist.
In June of 2024, CBP arrested eight Tajik nationals, all on the terror watchlist with ties to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to the congressional report, at least four of those eight have been released into the U.S. through the CBP One app, which allows illegal immigrants to schedule appointments with immigration judges before reaching a U.S. port of entry, effectively bypassing border patrol agents. Earlier this year, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that the CBP One app had been used to shuttle over 320,000 into 43 different U.S. airports across the country — just over the course of 2023 alone.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request forced the CBP to admit that the American people “can’t know the receiving airports because those hundreds of thousands of CBP-authorized arrivals have created such ‘operational vulnerabilities’ at airports that ‘bad actors’ could undermine law enforcement efforts to ‘secure the United States border’ if they knew the volume of CBP One app traffic processed at each port of entry.” As CIS summarized, “In short, the Biden administration’s legally dubious program to fly inadmissible aliens over the border and directly to U.S. airports has allegedly created law enforcement vulnerabilities too grave to release publicly, lest ‘bad actors’ take advantage of them to inflict harm on public safety.”
The House Homeland Security Committee has also reported that, under the Biden-Harris administration, DHS has released known and suspected terrorists into the U.S. Retired Army officer and Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for National Security Lt. Colonel Bob Maginnis previously warned that the Biden-Harris administration’s open-borders policies pose a “heightened level” of risk relating to terrorist attacks against the U.S. He characterized the situation as “Charlie trending to Delta,” referring to the two most extreme force protection level designations. Numerous other national security experts, from FBI Director Christopher Wray to policy watchdog analysts, have warned that America’s open southern border leaves the nation increasingly vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement’s report comes as Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, is facing criticism for her involvement in the Biden-Harris administration’s border crisis, including her failure to secure the southern border despite being appointed “border czar” by President Joe Biden. Polling has consistently shown that immigration and associated rising crime rates are among the top concerns for American voters heading into November.
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.